Filed under: BlackSpin, Elections, Barack Obama, News
The Bradley Effect was supposed to be the ace in the hole for Republicans during this presidential election -- a dirty little Election Day factor steeped in white mistrust of a black candidate.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2008 presidential election results.
The Bradley Effect had no effect. Voting in the election pretty much mirrored what pollsters had predicted. Whites who told pollsters they were going to vote for Obama, in fact, did.
So for now, the Bradley Effect, the theory that says in elections between a black and white candidate that some white voters will express a willingness to vote for a black candidate to pollsters before the election but will ultimately vote for the white nominee, is left in tatters. ...
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The theory was born when Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American, led in the polls, but lost his 1982 bid for governor.
And it has been witnessed in more than a dozen major elections in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Virginia since then where a black candidate either lost an election after polls forecast their victory or a black candidate eked out a narrow win after a landslide victory was predicted.
Some believe Obama may have suffered from the Bradley Effect in his California primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Obama lost by a landslide 10 percentage points despite one late survey showing him ahead by 13 points and two others giving him a one-point lead.
One thing is certain. If any election was going to exhibit the Bradley Effect, this sure seemed to be the one.
First of all, it marked the first time a man of African descent was so close to winning a presidential election. Other observers predicted white voters would be scared off by Barack Obama's unusual name or perhaps the unsubstantiated yet widely spread rumors about him being a Muslim.
But Obama defanged many of the worries raised by his opponents because he never allowed race to become a defining characteristic of his campaign. In fact, the only time race became an issue was when his association with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright was unearthed.
And then, Obama handled the situation with poise and honesty in a speech on race which seemed to put the issue to bed for most Americans.
So while Obama took race out as a factor in the election, the poorly-run McCain campaign and its selection of the not-ready-for primetime vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave voters of all colors sufficient reason to say they would vote Democratic - and to follow through.
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Paul Shepard blogs the Democrat side of the election for BlackVoices. He has been a journalist for 16 years; on the national urban/minority affairs beat for The Cleveland Plain Dealer and for The AP in Washington, D.C.
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